Practical Help & Advice on Small Office Computer Storage

What’s Wrong with Your PC – A Detective Story

Computer Troubleshooting 101

Troubleshooting is really a kind of detective work. Like Sherlock Holmes, you have to use a bit of deduction, a smidgen of specialized knowledge with just plain old “mother wit” or common sense. Troubleshooting is an easy skill to pick up and learn. As a matter of fact, you probably use some troubleshooting skills already.

It was a dark and stormy night...a bedtime story of troubleshooting... Ahh, you sit down at your computer after dinner to check out your email and pay some bills online. You pop open the CD player beside your desk. You slip in your favorite disc and push play. It seems to be spinning but no sound comes out.

You first check the volume control. Hmmm...it's turned all the way up. You pop out the CD, examine it and pop it back in. Still spins but no sound. Huh?

You hunt down another CD, one you have only played a few times. Drop it in and push....still no sound. What the...? You foolishly check to make sure the player is really plugged in. AH-HA! The power plug is loose. You smile and reseat it back into the outlet. You push the button...

DANG IT! still no sound! You grab up the player and give it a good hard shake! Agggh! The sound comes blasting out of the speaker. @^&%**! You hastily turn down the volume and that's when you hear it.

The ominous rattle of "something broken"! You unplug the box, paw in your desk for a screwdriver and pry open the back. That's when you see the villain; one of the speakers is dangling by its' wires. The little plastic holder thingy is broken and the metal screw doobie has come loose.

Now the question is; do you try and fix the speaker (Duct Tape? is cheap) or buy a new CD player? It boils down to just two things: You must either repair something or replace something. See...I told you, troubleshooting is not hard. You do it all the time. With the CD player, you followed a series of steps to "discover" what was wrong.

That's all...and that's all you ever really have to do with your computer problems. Figure out what is wrong with your PC (troubleshooting) and either reinstall it (for bad software) or replace it (for broken PC parts).

And you now come back to the same question that stumps most people: "Do I try and fix it by myself (i.e. spend my time; save my money) "OR" do I let someone else fit it (i.e. spend my money; but save my time)?

Read on because the FixComputerProblemsGuide.com website will give all the information you need to make this decision.